Oklahoma station drops evolution from showing of Cosmos

The same week that a bill targeting evolution education passes the OK House.

In our review of the new science series Cosmos, we noted that the program didn't shy away from diving into scientific ideas that many in the US find uncomfortable. Apparently, local Fox affiliate KOKH found a creative way to protect the minds of its viewers: run a news promo over the bits about evolution. Naturally, the butchery ended up on YouTube the very next day.

In Oklahoma, fossils are not your ancestors.

The station has since stated that the running of the promo was an accident and that it will re-air the episode in its entirety on Saturday night.

But elsewhere in KOKH's home town of Oklahoma City, people really are trying to alter how evolution is presented—in the public schools' science classrooms. The state House of Representatives has just passed a bill that would keep any school authorities from punishing a teacher for doing, well, anything when it comes to students' understanding of scientific theories, essentially inviting them to bring in non-scientific material in order to attack evolution.

In fact, "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning" were all mentioned as likely subjects where teachers should be protected in the original bill, but they were stripped out in later versions. The bill also explicitly disavows that any of this is religiously motivated. However, the language of the bill (and many others introduced in recent years) is taken from a template provided by The Discovery Institute, an overtly religious think tank that promotes intelligent design.

(Incidentally, the Discovery Institute blogging staff is having a collective fit over Cosmos, with a half-dozen entries on the topic and one Discovery Senior Fellow even suggesting the film Case for a Creator as a "cure" for the new series.)

So far, only two states have passed this sort of "teach the controversy" legislation (Tennessee and Louisiana). But there are some signs of progress. In 2014, some Louisiana legislators are currently attempting to repeal a law that requires a balanced treatment of evolution and creationism; the law was declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1987.

Promoted Comments

Not quite correct. This was broadcast on many different channels. The Discover channel operations showed earlier. Also, the east coast feed would have been at least an hour ahead. This was a rebroadcast, not the initial broadcast.

More specifically, the data part of the signal transmits a code for when the episode airs. When playing a show, they have a content code embedded in the signal. The code changes when they do a national promos, then a separate code for local promos. ie, there is a specific code identifier for when this promo would have been played. You assign the items for your local promos to a queue, then they auto start when the appropriate code is processed. During the time this episode was playing, it was playing the national content code signal. You have to manually override the signal feed to get it to air other materials. The most common thing is a sprawl page at the bottom on the screen. Or, they can override the code completely and switch to local control. These switches are generally multistep processes to avoid this sort of thing.

ie, they have to go through a specific set of actions to override the incoming code over the network signal.

This is false. I am a chief engineer at a Fox affiliate. Fox broadcasting uses a system they call the splicer. Signals go in through the satellite receiver into a Cisco D9900 video processor, and straight out to broadcast. When local material needs to be inserted, the local affiliate has a GPI (simple relay) to trigger a different source selection.

The splicer has only two sources. Network, and local. In network mode, the fox splicer intelligently decides which receiver and which satellite to use. The rack is completely redundant, any piece of equipment can suddenly die and the signal will automatically recover. The network controls the receivers, we are literally locked out from changing the settings on them. Watching the east coast feed IS possible, but they wouldn't do that because it would cause other problems (such as not being able to receive promos without retuning the single decoder in the rack).

In local mode (commanded with the GPI trigger), the splicer will LET the local signal proceed through the splicer rack. The Fox splicer rack is ALWAYS the last item in a TV stations transmission chain, even past the local encoders and PSIP encoder.

Fox affiliates do NOT have access to the HD-SDI raw video stream (a item of much contention with affiliates). The splicer rack also modifies the local PSIP, and functions as a EAS crawl generator.

It's a completely different architecture than most TV stations, and what you're saying doesn't make much sense even for CBS or NBC. You seem to be referring to VANC data and I'd love to see an automation system that forces you to override VANC codes.

Here's what really happened. During primetime most automation systems are waiting on a trigger either time-of-day based or manual. Any station worth it's salt has got it set so that when a commercial plays, it triggers the GPO for "splice to local". When a network-live element plays, it triggers the GPO for "splice to network". This makes splicer operation transparent to the master control operator.

A single button press to play the promo did it. Promos are usually late-breaking so he was probably loading a promo for the late news into the playlist and screwed up.